We’re not in Beverly Hills any more, Toto: teen drama in 2018 is a darker, more politically-charged genre than ever. Take Riverdale, whose creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa told the Guardian last year that his high school drama was “a little more of a noir or a Lynchian story … it’s not just a coming-of-age tale”. The comic book writer and screenwriter is also the creator of the new Netflix reboot of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, which provides a more grownup, “woker” take on witchcraft (so much so that the programme makers have been sued by a Satanic temple). Indeed, when Channel 4 announced they would be adding 00s reboot 90210 to their on-demand service this month, it seemed a relic of a more soapy, stylish era.

If it seems that the UK is lagging behind on engaged – and engaging – teen drama, fear not; this week sees the return of BBC3’s Clique, which only gets more brooding in its second run. One of the BBC’s most popular releases when it debuted early last year, Clique’s first series delved into corruption at the heart of Edinburgh’s student community, with a group of self-proclaimed feminists becoming increasingly involved in the shady finance company Solasta. For all its death and destruction, this was effectively a story about modern womanhood, with the group’s mentor, Professor McDermid, telling protagonist Holly and friends that “feminism in this country has been infected with misinformation … I am not here to help you joyride because you happen to possess a vagina”, while unwittingly pushing them further into the dangerous hands of her own brother, Alistair.

‘The show captures the struggles that young people face and imbues them with all the shocks and scares of a good old-fashioned thriller.’ Photograph: Mark Mainz/BBC Studios/Balloon Entertainment/Mark Mainz

Clique’s first series was the perfect allegory for the vapidity of commodified, Lean In-a-like feminism, while also preempting the #MeToo movement by putting sexual assault at the core of its scandal. In the end, it wasn’t the clique itself that was the biggest threat to the girls, but rather today’s world.

It would have been easy for the show’s creator, former Skins writer Jess Brittain, to pen another series following similar lines, but the joy of Clique – as well as it being a very pacy thriller – was how current it felt, with a plot almost ripped from the headlines. And so, its second series focuses not on the girls but the boys caught up in the university’s political underbelly, at a time when toxic masculinity – especially on the right – feels more formidable than ever. A Paul Joseph Watson-type figure, Jay Galatas, arrives on campus in episode one, sparking questions about no-platforming, meninism, and consent. As a recognisable face following the Solasta case, Holly finds herself pursued by his followers, who write for a kind of student Breitbart and provoke “libtards” and “snowflakes”. It is no coincidence that the essay Holly attempts to write every few scenes focuses on medieval depictions of romance and chivalry, as those around her navigate what being a man means in 2018 and she figures out whether to trust them.

As before, Clique bends and stretches its realism at will (this is, of course, a programme whose first series ended on the big reveal that Solasta employee Rachel was a psychopath who had known Holly since childhood and exploited her existing trauma). However, once again it finds its true horror in the world around us; gender and identity politics form the backbone of the terror that unfolds.

The show captures the struggles that young people face and imbues them with all the shocks and scares of a good old-fashioned thriller, even down to Holly sharing a flat with a girl she doesn’t know, and whose overfamiliarity hints at Single White Female territory. Or does it? After all, Holly is the shellshocked, suspicious prism through which we view the situation. In any case, in a world where we’re learning to confront the truth about bogeymen being the sorts of people who walk among us, Clique is surely just the thing that teens – and beyond – need to see on screen.